And here we are again. It’s This Week in Panels, where I am M. Bison, Matlock is Sagat, Gaijin Dan is Vega and Space Jawa is Balrog. We’ve got a shitload of panels this week, mostly with me and Matlock double-dipping. Sadly, I’m the only one reading New Warriors, which is adorable as hell. Especially this issue where Hummingbird starts falling for Speedball. Speedball, who looks like a normal, well-adjusted human being compared to her.

On the other hand, Moon Knight. Oh my God, Moon Knight. I mean, if you haven’t started reading it yet, you might as well just wait for the trade since the current creative team is only lasting a whopping six issues before splitting up. So far the series has been completely kickass and I can’t recommend it enough.

Good news, everybody! Rotworld is over! Open up the champagne! Knock over the giant statue of Arcane! We can finally move on!

Welcome to this week’s edition of This Week in Panels, the segment that takes a bunch of comics me and some others have read and cuts them down to size into single panel chunks that best describe what kind of comic you’re going to get. With me are Gaijin Dan, Was Taters, Jody and Space Jawa. Oh, and Matlock, the guy who convinced me to start reading Injustice: Gods Among Us contributed too. Good for him.

The one for Avengers was a hard choice because it’s a really clever issue and I didn’t want to give away the ending. My pick comes off a little ho-hum. It’s still worth checking out.

Also, I had my first Improv 401 performance today. I’ve done better and I’m sure I’ll do worse, but I have two more shows left in the next month and I’m confident I can improve. It seems like I’ll have a video to post in a day or so.

Age of Apocalypse #13
David Lapham, Renato Arlem and Valentine De Landro

Yo. I have to get up early tomorrow for jury duty, which I think means I have to put on battle armor and hunt down Venom, so I’m just going to rush this update. It’s me, Jody, Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa. Was Taters is currently flailing around in a pit of quicksand.

This week I’m just flanked by Jody and Gaijin Dan, but that’s okay, since they both read a lot of stuff. Lot of great books came out this week, such as Action Comics, Avengers, Deadpool, Minute Men, Hawkeye and that Hellboy thing (so I hear).

ONE HUNDRED FIFTY! I need to get out more. This seems like as good a time as any to go over the mission statement:

This Week in Panels (ThWiP) is about taking every new comic my posse and I have read this week and sawing it down to its essence. If this was a commercial that was all, “This week in Age of Apocalypse!” this is the kind of thing you’d see. No final page images. No gigantic spoilers. No splash pages. Just the comics summed up in one panel. If there’s a series you like that isn’t covered on a regular basis, you’re more than welcome to email me. It’s on the sidebar.

This time I’m helped out by Was Taters, Gaijin Dan, Jody and Space Jawa. Many thanks to them and everyone else who made the past 150 weeks such a fun routine.

Good day and welcome to another ThWiP. I swear, one of these days I’ll get around to doing an opening graphic or something. Maybe. Probably not.

I’m joined by Was Taters, Gaijin Dan and Jody.

The Before Watchmen panel is all me. I guess I should nip this in the bud before it melts into the comments, but I’m checking out the comics for the time being. I’m genuinely curious and I can’t bring myself to care about the situation as much as David does, as much as I dig his passion on the subject. In the end, I feel the same about the Moore situation as I do when someone tells me what a hotdog is made of. Yeah, that’s terrible and disgusting, and the JMS stuff will probably give me diarrhea later, but I’m still in the mood to chow down. David gives zero fucks and, as always, lets me do my thing. I only mention this because I don’t want people moaning about how he’s a hypocrite for allowing a panel of Before Watchmen on his site after all his open disgust. That’s all on me, a guy with a difference of opinion.

Plus it’s payback for the time he put a Jeph Loeb comic panel as a header image. That asshole.

Now for some panels.

Action Comics #10
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales, Sholly Fisch and CAFU

Age of Apocalypse #4
David Lapham, Roberto de la Torre and Renato Arlem

Howdy. Strong week with many thanks to Jody, Gaijin Dan and Was Taters for helping out. While Space Jawa has nothing for me in terms of this week, he did stock me up on some Free Comic Book Day panels for next week’s update. I’ve been busy the past couple days, so I haven’t been able to read too much, but I did have to chuckle at the free Avengers comic Marvel gave out.

It’s a rerelease of the .1 issue they did a year ago, which has yet to have any bearing on Marvel. Some jumping-on point. Anyway, the book featured a subplot of Spider-Woman being kidnapped by some mad scientist types and finding herself in a cell with her wrists cuffed together and her clothes missing. I mean, I guess Bendis has done that before with the full team, but having just a woman tossed into this role is asking for trouble. I don’t go around looking for fan outrage, but considering so many considered it way over-the-line when Bendis had Dr. Doom — the evil mass murderer and dictator — refer to Ms. Marvel as a cow during a rant, I can only imagine the Spider-Woman thing didn’t go over so well. In the Free Comic Book Day release, they alter all the panels from these scenes. Not only is she recolored so that she’s wearing her outfit, but they changed her dialogue so that she’s no longer yelling at the Wizard to give her back her clothes.

I imagine this is either because A) the misogyny outcry backlash, B) more kids are going to be getting these comics, so they should calm down on the cheesecake and/or C) if you want to see Jessica Drew’s skin, you’re going to pay for it, mister!

Like I said, I find the whole thing rather funny. Especially when you look closer at the panels. The Mad Thinker must have decided that Spider-Woman’s costume wings were a major danger and had them removed before putting her in her prison. And also, while her costume was always tight enough to be painted on, that doesn’t stop her feet from looking very non-bootlike. Seeing her curled, yellow toes just looks weird.

It’s time to start round 2 of this experiment. It’s the second month and we’re getting our second issues. Will the good comics continue to be good? Will I regret giving some of them another shot?

The DC comics I didn’t get this week due to dropping them a month ago are Green Arrow, Hawk and Dove and Red Lanterns. To fill the void, I figure I’ll talk briefly about the two miniseries that just started up.

First up is Action Comics by Grant Morrison, Rags Morales and Brent Anderson. The wave of awesome continues and Morales eyes or not, I’m enjoying the hell out of it. The carefree Superman really is a breath of fresh air and I just wish more writers could get a handle on it more than Morrison and, from little we’ve seen so far, Johns. What I truly enjoyed was how it portrays Lex Luthor. He goes from cruel and egotistical on his quest for knowledge and dominance to a desperate coward at almost the drop of a hat. One thing I’ve always loved about Lex Luthor is his main weakness of being closed-minded. Once he believes something, it takes a lot of persuasion for him to change his mind on it. It’s much like how AI characters lose due to humans making human choices, but for Luthor, it’s about non-Luthor people making non-Luthor choices. That’s why he could never put it together that Clark and Superman were the same in older continuity. If he were Superman, he’d never have a secret identity, ergo Superman is just Superman. This leads to him acting like he has four aces when it turns out Superman has a royal flush up his sleeve. Then we get this perfect angry face.

I have a feeling the new Luthor is going to have a couple more character surprises. I can’t wait. Better believe I’m sticking.

Speaking of rad comics, Animal Man follows up on the first issue’s momentum. It’s kind of jarring, yet welcome, how similar the Baker family is to the Richards family in FF, only more suburban and a couple family members don’t have powers. It’s reached its stride in being an off-putting horror comic, but there’s just enough family togetherness to make it work. Ellen is justifiably pissy about what’s going on, but not pissy enough to make her unlikeable. Maxine’s know-it-all hold over her now powers mixed with being a naïve child make her almost as creepy as whatever the real threat is, but it’s kind of sweet how she stands up for her brother. I also find it kind of funny how when Cliff – the son of a superhero – is threatened, the very first person he calls for help is his mother. That’s a cute touch.

When it’s creepy, it’s disturbing. The hippo sequence is gross as hell and we still don’t know what we’re really up against. Just that whatever it is, it’s unsavory and downright demonic. I’m hooked. Sticking.

DC’s experiment of desperation goes full blast this week. Instead of going out with the old and in with the new with only two comics as of last week, we have thirteen new #1s to play around with. Naturally, I bought all thirteen for my own little experiment. As I stated last week, I used to read a lot of DC only a few years ago, but over time they almost completely lost me. Now I want to give them a new chance and see how their 52 jumping on points fare by the end of six months of story.

Alphabetical order works, so we’ll begin with Action Comics #1 by Grant Morrison and Rags Morales. Couldn’t really ask for a better way to start. A couple years ago I read through a collection of old 1930’s Superman newspaper strips that featured less of Superman fighting robots and more of Superman standing up for the little man. Considering how unbeatable he was at the time regardless of who he was fighting, there was more enjoyment and will fulfillment in those down-to-earth adventures. I like getting to see a modern take and Morrison’s the best choice for it. He’s already said all there is to say about the previous incarnation of Superman with All-Star Superman and now he gets to go at it from another angle.

It’s fresh and it’s fun. Any shadiness from seeing him play interrogator is undone by his absolute glee in everything he does and the “oh shucks” way he interacts with the people he helps. Luthor comes off as menacing, Lois has her trademark death wish for the facts and the only real drawback is the occasional weird Morales eyes.

It’s a new world in the DCU, so time will tell what Superman will develop with and what he’ll develop from. Either way, I’m definitely sticking with this one for the foreseeable future.

Less than a year ago, Alan Moore went on one of his usual tirades. The kind where he goes on about how he doesn’t read a thing by Marvel or DC, but knows they suck just because. You know the kind.

Yeah, like that.

While ranting about the comic business is part of Moore’s Thursday routine, this instance was different. By this point, the comic industry had taken enough of his bitterness. For one, fellow scary bearded writer Jason Aaron wrote up a big essay on how he once idolized the man, but is now completely over him. DC Comics, meanwhile, seemed to take it just as personally. While they have no problem making money off of Moore’s old classics in trade form, he’s otherwise dead to them. In the past couple months, it seems DC’s making it their business to wipe Moore’s presence from DC continuity.

Sure, he gave us that comic with the naked blue guy and the creepy dude who’d always go, “Hurm.” He gave us that cool Superman story where he was all, “MONGUUUUUUL!” But those stand by themselves. When you look at it, in terms of DC continuity, there are three major impacts Moore has made. Four if you count the Blackest Night hoopla, but that was really just a minor aside that Geoff Johns mutated into something else entirely. Five if you count John Constantine, but let’s face it. There’s no damage DC can do to him that the movie didn’t already.

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